Our Pilot Facility

Joint Monash-CSIRO Membrane Pilot Facility

The opening of the new Joint Monash-CSIRO Membrane Pilot Facility marks a significant milestone for the MCMI, reinforcing our commitment to advancing membrane technology and strengthening partnerships with industry.

The Joint Monash–CSIRO Membrane Pilot Facility is a state-of-the-art research facility, supporting the scale-up of laboratory breakthroughs, validating emerging membrane technologies under real-world conditions, and bridging the gap between academic research and commercial application.

We offer:

Module Prototyping
Pilot-Scale Testing
Optimisation and Process Design
Highly trained technical staff.

Instrumentation

The Membrane Pilot Facility hosts state-of-the-art instrumentation for the fabrication and testing of membranes at pilot scale. Below is a list of the equipment available at Joint Monash-CSIRO Membrane Pilot Facility and MCMI

The Flat Sheet Membrane Casting System is suitable for lab scale experiments as well as for small-scale production of flat sheet membranes with a casting width of up to 300mm and casting thickness of 10μm to ~8,000μm.
The custom-made Flat Sheet Membrane Coating System allows production of membranes via two dip coating steps followed by drying in the inbuilt oven. It is suitable to produce membranes with a width of up to 300mm.
The CHALLENGER650 is an ultra-precision, fully integrated and multifunctional printing, coating, laminating and drying system. It is suitable for printing of multilayers on flexible and rigid substrates with the highest accuracy and allows for the design of complex structures.
The Convergence NF/RO pilot system is meant for testing nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) type of membranes, and is used to perform filtration tests, retention tests, fouling studies and cleaning studies.
The Sterlitech Benchtop CF/FO Filtration System is a laboratory-scale filtration unit that allows the evaluation of a variety of osmotically driven membrane processes, including forward osmosis and pressure retarded osmosis. The measurements are carried out using a Sepa FO cell which accepts polymeric flat sheet membrane coupons and mimics both laminar or turbulent flow conditions.
The Memsift Membrane Distillation (MD) lab pilot unit can be used to test various MD configurations such as Air Gap MD, Direct Contact MD, Permeate Gap MD, Vacuum MD and Sweeping Gas MD. This unit is suitable to test any type of MD modules including hollow fibre, plate and frame, tubular, ceramic, and spiral wound. The water treatment capacity of this pilot unit is up to 25L/day.
The SurPASS 3 elecrokinetic analyser allows a fully automated zeta potential analysis of macroscopic solids under real-life conditions. These measurements can be used for detection and monitoring of membrane fouling, contributing to the optimization of membrane performance.
The Metrohm IC, equipped with an autosampler, can be used to detect and analyse a variety of monovalent and multivalent ions (including transition metal ions).
The Biologic VSP-300 potentiostat can be used for various electrochemical analyses including corrosion, electrodeposition, and battery testing. An Enhanced Controlled Environment Sample Holder (CESH-e) is also available for electrical characterization of flat material samples (such as membranes) in the temperature range between -40 to 150 °C.
The GCF1700 furnace is a controlled atmosphere muffle furnace. This furnace can perform multiple atmosphere processes in a single cycle.
AOT-AFA-DS300 is a vertical roll to roll coater designed for preparing double-sided electrode sheets for Li-Ion batteries, Graphene thin-film coating, ceramic coating, and NiMH batteries.

Access to the Facility

Our instrumentation is available to Monash researchers, external universities, government research agencies, and industry. A fee is charged for instrument usage, with a reduced rate for Monash staff and students working on internal university projects. Our team provides expert training and research support, enabling you to operate our instruments independently and analyse your data with confidence.

For more information, please contact Dr Gagan Kaur, Centre Manager, MCMI.

Location

New Horizons Building (20 Research Way), Monash University

Monash Centre for Membrane Innovation (MCMI)